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July 23, 2012

The NCAA was created in 1906 because football was killing people. It was organized under the aegis of President Theodore Roosevelt because “plays” like the “flying wedge” were routinely resulting in the death of college students. He didn't want the game to become more important than human life.

The penalties imposed today on Penn State are in keeping with that mission, and while Pennsylvania is a northern state they will resonate most in the south. The last decade has seen an incredible football money chase, accelerating every year, and to say that any football program in the Southeastern Conference is subservient to its academic masters is a gross lie.

I hear it on sports talk stations all the time. What does President (Insert Name Here) know? How dare he criticize Coach (thus and so). Or when an honest coach with a losing record is fired, what's the message there? Just win, baby. And the boosters nod in sympathy.

Even in the wake of this press conference, ESPN “College Gamday” analyst Chris Fowler insisted that college athletics isn't “going backward,” that the money put into it will only go up. “It's going to be an uphill fight,” he added, but he seemed skeptical the fight will really be made.

Coach Lou Holtz, by contrast, had it right. “College football is way too big. Coach's salaries are out of line.” But Holtz was never “just” a football coach. (Of course we thought that was true of Paterno.)

The people who wrap their lives around college football, who pore over lists of recruits like Kremlinologists, and who throw their hard-earned dollars into “seat licenses” and other gimmicks for ever-larger football palaces, they're the real enablers here. We created Joe Paterno. He never went into football expecting, or wanting to be, that guy. That he was seduced into becoming that guy tells you everything you need to know about the level of corruption, and temptation, in the sport.

July 13, 2012

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 28 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

In 2012 the software industry is like an iceberg. Most of it is under the water.

Not underwater, mind you. Under the water.

That's because the world of “applications” is over. It's all about the apps now, brutha. And no one in the app business has yet gone public. The smart VC guys and private equity people are putting tons of money into the space, so there's no need to go public, no need to give the public investor a taste.

It's like the social boom. You'll know the bust has started when one of these outfits starts looking for suckers on NASDAQ.

Doesn't mean there's no there, there. There is. I found that out Monday when I went to a “MeetUp” for Techcrunch.com at the Sweetwater Brewery, a few miles from my home.

The place was packed. Cars were parked around the corner and down the next street. (They could do it because this is a warehouse district where everyone else goes home around 5 PM.) There were well over 3,000 people there. Mostly male, mostly young, mostly white. But not exclusively. I was also pleased to find two people who rode bikes there. A guy my own age who admitted he'd taken the train to a nearby transit stop, and a younger guy who'd ridden 8 miles in rush-hour traffic.

March 08, 2012

Last night I saw the most amazing thing, although what was most amazing was how unremarked upon it was.

A record crowd filled the old Skydome in Toronto for a soccer game in March between two MLS teams, Toronto and the LA Galaxy. It wasn't even a league match, although it wasn't a friendly, either. Instead, it was a quarter-final in something called the CONCACAF Champions League, a regional competition designed to replicate what the UEFA Champions League has in Europe.

This competition has been going on for several years but Americans haven't really cared about it. Teams have almost deliberately fallen-down after being chosen, including the Galaxy, whom I once saw lose a two-legged tie to Puerto Rico's A-League outfit in front of maybe 2,000 people.

February 08, 2012

"Enough with the politically correct B.S.," wrote one commenter. "PC is BS," wrote another. "Way to cave by all means give in to political correctness even when its not correct to start with," wrote a third.

In fact there was never any need to back up the wahmbulance. All that was required was some imagination.

You know that tomahawk that was on the front of all the uniforms for years, and that got turned into a potent rally point after the team "stole" the Florida State University "arm chop" cheer? (They later sold foam tomahawks with which to do the cheer.)

You know what that tomahawk looked a lot like?

A fire axe.

You know who's really brave, for reals? Firemen. Police, too. All first responders. And you know what they call the heads of their departments? Chief.

So just announce you're going to drop the "s." The Atlanta Brave. The home of the Brave, the last line of the "Star Spangled Banner." The tomahawk on the uniform becomes a fire axe. The Indian joins the Village People and gets a cop hat. He can have the same crazed look -- just pretend he's going after an Occupy demonstration. (I kid.)

And when you make the announcement, you do it with a native American who has also been a fire chief, or a police chief. Find someone of native American ancestry who served on 9-11. Or the fire chief up at the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. You trot him out, in uniform, you put a hat on him and voila -- Chief Nokahoma! You replace the old teepee from the 70s with a fire station set-up, and when we hit one out the "chief" (or his successor) comes down the pole and rings the fire alarm, cheering.

January 09, 2012

Tebow has managed to reverse the way we talk about the quarterback position, and about athletes and race. Funny how no one noticed.

As recently as 10 years ago, when Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb were kids, black quarterbacks were described as "athletic" and white ones as "heady." It was a racist presumption, based on the fact that both Vick and Donovan were fast, agile runners while top white quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Brett Favre would drop back, survey the defense, and sling it.

This racism pervaded the whole sport. It was assumed that blacks were best in the "athletic" positions, whites in the positions requiring smarts. And this, in turn, was used as an excuse to maintain racism in the coaching ranks -- it still pervades college coaching. There were very few white linebackers, and even fewer white running backs.

Tebow puts the lie to all this. He's athletic as can be, and in football terms he's as dumb as a post. He doesn't look at three or four choices, as Tom Brady does. He looks at one, or pretends to look at one while actually planning on going the other way. He also runs a lot. He's athletic and he's quick.

Meanwhile, McNabb and Vick have grown up to be fairly heady people, in a football sense. McNabb became a thrower later in his career, and Vick's always had the gun. Whatever you think of them as men (and many Atlantans and pet lovers will never see Vick as anything but a thug) the fact is they're seen as quarterbacks. This has opened the way to a host of mediocre black quarterbacks -- Tavaris Jackson, David Gerrard being just two names that come to mind.

Point is that Tebow is an athlete. He's not a quarterback. He's white, not black. Black guys can be heady and white guys can be athletes. An accomplishment of a curious sort.

Oh, and go Wednesday. Now we return you to your regularly-scheduled tech blog.

January 03, 2012

I am not giving up on the War Against Oil. Far from it. I will continue following its progress, here and elsewhere, through 2012 and beyond crossover.

But I've learned something about myself. I live for the bleeding edge, for the technology frontier. Once things seem set, once the byways are established, I tend to lit out for the undiscovered country.

As a journalist, that's my “thing.” Always has been. I sought out the Internet starting in 1983, got into e-commerce in the early 1990s, covered the Internet of Things as early as 2002, and became an open source reporter in 2005, before moving to The War Against Oil a few years ago.

Each has represented a sea change in how we look at life and technology. The Internet is the biggest story of our time, by far, and e-commerce is a big part of it. The War Against Oil will be the biggest story of this decade, returning us all to prosperity and turning today's unemployment problem into tomorrow's labor shortage.

But what comes after that? What comes after is something I've dreamed of since I was a kid. Useful, commercial, consumer robots. Thus I call this section of the blog Asimov Ville. (Asimov wrote his short story The Last Question, in which the universe was created by a robot, in 1964.

August 24, 2010

I haven't written about soccer recently, so all you politics fans stand down a moment.

In the wake of a disappointing performance at the World Cup, American football has to start over. Landon Donovan is 28 and will be heading downhill by 2014. Most Americans currently playing in Europe are being treated shabbily, they're being called lazy and lacking in ball skills. They have no leverage to be treated better.

The next U.S. coach -- and it probably won't be Bob Bradley again -- needs to add agent to his skill set. He needs to take responsibility for having key players learning and playing constantly. While European coaches can complain about the selfishness of their hopefuls, the American coach needs to be selfish for his players.

The USA team was hurt last time by the fact so many of our stars and potential stars were sitting on European benches. Solving the problem needs to be job one. Since European games are now all over American TV this job is becoming more urgent. (Ironically part of the solution involves sending some of our kids to places like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, where they are more likely to get playing time and the fans' abuse will toughen them up.)

But there is a job two that is closely related. That is getting our top stars onto top European clubs and onto the field of play.

As Europe heads toward the closing of its transfer deadline, much of the speculation concerns Donovan. He played well at Everton, and they want him back. But Donovan doesn't want to go back. There is one MLS player, however, who is at the top of his game, who would benefit enormously from European play, and who could become a starl there.

Buddle is 29. He has been scoring at a breakneck pace for a year now. He is the best scorer the Galaxy has, including Donovan. He is up for the challenge. He can go into an English side and do a lot more than Altidore did, because he has more experience.

American soccer deserves more respect. MLS is no longer a place where any European pro can shine. The level of play is on a par with the top of England's Championship -- and level with that of Scotland. (It's actually faster than Scotland.) But we don't get respect because our best young players aren't ready for top European leagues, they're shuttled from pillar-to-post and don't develop, and our best players tend to stay here.

October 12, 2009

No tech today. No business. No politics. It's Columbus Day so we'll pretend it's your day off.

Instead it's something completely different. American football. Specifically its analysis, and the best guy working in that field. Tony Dungy (right).

In his first year Dungy has taken over NBC's Sunday Night football show with his quiet authority, with his knowledge and with his humanity. The network found a perfect sidekick for him in the recently-retired Rodney Harrison, but this is Dungy's show and we're all the better for it.

Football needed a new face when John Madden quit, and while it's a surprise to find it in a studio show host you take what you can get. Everyone on the set defers to Dungy, and it's easy to see why. Everything he says is letter-perfect for the moment. He knows the people, he knows the game as very few do (which he's proven) but there's something about his air of calm, reflective authority I find fascinating.